SEQUIM — Sherwood Assisted Living hosted the Olympic Peninsula Doll Club’s “Timeless Treasures,” an exhibit and sale of antique to modern dolls.
Members of the club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, have as intriguing and varied a background as the dolls they were sharing with the public on Nov. 16.
Connie Holtz’s Japanese doll collection began while she spent a year in Japan in her position as a set designer at Tokyo Disney Sea.
“We’re very close,” she said about the doll club. “We’re like sisters.”
Members of the club, whose mission is to celebrate and preserve the artistry and history of dolls as well as to gather with like-minded individuals, said they had a good turnout, both from the public and residents, and that it was interesting to see which dolls various people gravitated toward.
The club meets once a month for a program about a specific doll or some aspect of collecting. It is part of a broader organization known as “The United Federation of Dolls” and was founded in 1974 by Sandy Brehan, then a recent arrival from Seattle, and the late Dolly Creasey, who used to operate a doll repair shop in Carlsborg.
Christine Brehan, current president and child of founder Brehan, grew up in the club. She said these days people with broken dolls go to Vicki Carlisle, who “learned at the feet of Dolly,” for restringing and restoration.
Carlisle said Dolly was excited by her interest and mentored her. She said she enjoys fixing the dolls but has no plans to open a repair shop herself.
Brehan drew much admiration for a selection of her collection of clothed miniature mannequins from the 1930s-50s. She said “stores that sold clothing would make up the mini clothes,” from patterns sent to them, and “customers would look at a mannequin and order their size” of the outfit.
Brehan uses the original patterns to make clothes for the mannequins.
Although the show exhibited dolls as old as 124, it also featured modern dolls that hearken back to other times, like Christine’s collection of “Orphan Train” dolls, which are individually named after some of the “200,000 poor, orphaned and abandoned city children who were sent on trains to the Midwest from the East Coast between 1854 and 1929,” as “Orphan Train” author Christina Baker Kline described on her website.
The dolls are handsculpted, each with their own face, by artist Elizabeth Cooper.
Anne Monday, who was a medical photographer for John Hopkins and a fashion design student, also displayed modern dolls called Gene (Marshall) dolls: a stylish 15.5-inch fashion doll with an early movie star background and a dazzling array of outfits, first marketed in 1995, designed by illustrator Mel Odom.
Less than one-fourth of Monday’s collection filled one of the three rows of tables at the not-for-sale part of the exhibit, as she is an expert in the doll.
Monday wrote and illustrated the book, “Gene: Dolls, Outfits and Accessories, 1995-2017,” a detailed hardback that sold out in its second edition.
“She came home and said, ‘I’ve got three dolls on layaway,’” said her husband, Mark, “and that’s how it began.”
The Olympic Peninsula Doll Club usually meets on the third Tuesday of the month; interested parties can contact Christine Brehan by email at ckb104@gmail.com.
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Emily Matthiessen is a reporter and photographer with Olympic Peninsula News Group, which includes the Sequim Gazette, Forks Forum and Peninsula Daily News. She can be reached by email at emily.matthiessen@sequimgazette.com.
